Dennis Tuuri

# Colossians 3:1-7 – Our Ascension and Its Implications
Sermon by Pastor Dennis R. Tuuri, December 13, 2015

It. But every year we move our way up to Christmas by going through Psalm 96, 97, 98 which is at the heart of that particular book of the Psalms in which they are found. There’s a structure and at the heart are those Psalms and they lead up to Psalm 98 with the coming of essentially pointing toward Messiah to bring justice and equity and to make all wrongs righted through history. So it’s a wonderful thing, a wonderful song and of course next week I’m sure we will sing Isaac Watts’ version of it, Joy to the World, which is based on that psalm.

Christmas is a glorious, joyful time of singing, among other things. And that’s because song breaks out in the scripture when the spirit moves, brings a king, exalts the king, and establishes the new order. That is a time when everything should sing, celebrating those historic events that changed the world. I would use this opportunity then to encourage you to pray for a new endeavor that we’ll be starting.

Gordon Murray will be starting as we move into the new year. He will begin having monthly evangelistic services here Sunday evenings beginning with once a month. It’ll be a time of song for about 30 minutes and then a short gospel message. So I would encourage any musicians who want to be involved in that to meet with Gordon in Ararat at 2:00 today after the agape. Sean, I noticed you came in earlier, hopefully you can make that meeting. If not, encourage yourself and other musicians to talk to Gordon about that. And as I say, it’s a wonderful time for this kind of outflow of singing to be entered into joyfully because of the events, the historical events that we celebrate with the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Today’s text will have an incredible truth, an absolutely astonishing fact at the beginning that it’s probably the most glorious truth and component element of the gospel for us. Secondly, it’ll have a lifelong, hopefully life-dominating, life-encompassing response that we’re to have to this incredibly good news. And then third, we’ll have a very interesting point to this text as we move toward its conclusion that I think will be fascinating to you and should actually fuel your anticipation and hope for the rest of your life. So I’ve kind of built it up, but I think those things are in this text.

The text is found in Colossians 3, verses 1-7. And this is a text that focuses, I think, on Christ’s ascension and ours. This marvelous fact. Please stand to the reading of God’s word.

Colossians 3:1-7: If then you are raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, appears, then you will also appear with him in glory. Therefore, put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Because of these things, the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you also yourselves once walked when you lived in them.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this glorious piece of text you put before us. May your Holy Spirit, whose dwelling within us we give you eternal thanks for, take this scripture, open it to our understanding, that we might be transformed by it, that we might respond with a lifelong commitment to its obedience. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. So the promised three points on your outline are what I just described. The most incredible, glorious truth, a fact, a statement is found in those first few verses and that truth is that we have ascended with Christ in our union with Christ. The ascension is what we participate in as well. Secondly, there’s a tremendous imperative that will occupy the rest of your lives if you believe this text, if you come into conformity to it, and that is that you are to continually set your mind on those things that are above, which are Christ, to set your mind on the not just the risen Jesus, the ascended and exalted Jesus, and that’s our calling. That’s the response to the truth of the ascension that’s given to us here. And then third, the fascinating aspect to think about in terms of this is how our lives are hidden in Christ. And I think there’s several dimensions to that which we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes.

Now before we do any of those things, however, I have to explain why I have this particular text and where I broke it off where I did. There are several reasons for this. In other words, many commentators would go 3:1 to 4 and then include the putting off stuff with the putting off, putting on verses that begin in verse 8. But this is the way I’ve decided to use it, and there are several reasons for that.

One reason, and I’ve got this on your handout, is I’m using the outlines that I’m using for the bulk of what these series of sermons on Colossians come from. Yes, we’re being careful to make attribution today. The book is called Colossians: Encouragement to Walk in All Wisdom as Holy Ones in Christ, and it’s written by John Paul Heil. And so this is where these structures that I’m giving you come from. I’ve mentioned this before, but I thought I’d actually have it printed up on the outline today. This is where these structures come from. And Heil decides to put 1 to 7 together.

And so I thought, well, if I have a choice, I’ll probably just opt that way. Okay. But he does it for good reasons. If you look at the text, he’s always looking at these matching terms and the significance of the words that are used. And to highlight these on your handout, I underlined these words: “then” and “therefore.” So there’s kind of a “therefore” at the beginning and there’s a “therefore” at the end. Those are the same Greek words.

In the opening section it talks about “things on the earth” and in the closing section it talks about “things which are on the earth, earth.” And so there’s bookends there, right? And that leads us into this center part: “For you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you will also appear with him in glory.” And if you wanted to break it up even further, which would be my tendency, we could have taken the two references to Christ at the middle and made them a center section with “life” and “life” around it.

But the point is kind of obvious, I think, that we’re being told something grand and glorious as a result of the resurrection, which is our ascension. And then we’re being told therefore to do particular things relative to that. And the heart of this message, the reason why we see ourselves as ascended and our life is at the right hand of God in Christ, is because of this center—because of Jesus and our life is in him.

So once more, the center of the candela, right? So there’s “therefore” at either end. You’ve been resurrected. See that you’re ascended. Set your mind on those things and therefore change your life, do particular things. And this thing we’re going to talk about is sex. That’s what this is about. And I didn’t choose to do that, but the text does.

You know, it’s interesting. You hear these critiques of Christians who always want to talk about sex so much all the time. And you know, we usually say, “Oh, no, no, no. There’s lots of things we talk about, right?” Apart from sexual sin. But it’s interesting because as we’ll see in a couple of minutes, Paul frontloads sexual sin in these lists. In the next section of Colossians, he’ll talk about putting off and putting on, and we’ll think about clothing and we’ll think about Adam and Eve and being clothed and we’ll think about taking off old clothing and putting on new clothing. And these are typical, you know, what commentators call vices and virtues, right? So there are things you want to put off, things you want to put on, mostly having to do with speech to put off. But these things in verses 5, 6 and 7 are broken off from there. We have no put on yet. That put on phrase begins in verse 8.

And so these things are frontloaded and connected up to this text that deals with our essential identity, who we are as Christians. And I guess I’m kind of getting to the point a little too quickly, much the same way that we’re rushing Christmas by singing these Christmas songs today. And now I’m actually rushing Ascension. Ascension, which happens 40 days after Easter, but they’re one event—the incarnation and the Easter, the death and resurrection and the ascension. It’s one event in the scriptures. It’s one history. But to push forward with this text, I think it abstracts out a list that has to do with sexual sins from the other lists because that is seen as particularly incompatible, particularly incompatible with our life in Christ, with our life in the Christ who has ascended.

It is particularly incompatible. Now, let that sink in, and I’ll come back to this in a couple of minutes. So I break it off at verse 7.

The commentator I’m using does it. There are two literary structure reasons with these matching bookends again: 1 and 7. And then three, because it separates it from the put off, put on—a definite unit which will begin happening in verse 8. So there are several reasons why I think this should be considered as a unit and why I’ve laid it out for you that way.

Connecting it back to what we said last week, in the last section, remember the last section in Colossians talks about how to walk in Christ. Right. So how are we going to walk in Christ? And we heard a bunch of things, mostly warnings about how we’re not supposed to do things—false asceticism, right? Asceticism, a desire to, you know, engage in fastings and visions and emotional states. And you know, we were warned by Paul. The Colossians were warned by Paul. Those things are of no use. Okay? They’re of no use. And so what he turns to now is what is of use. This is how we walk in Christ. It’s to set our minds on things above because our life shares in the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So the overall context of this is that we’re moving now away from the things we shouldn’t do in our walk with Christ and we’re moving to the things we should do.

One final comment about this is that we are at the center—some would say of the book of Colossians. And RCC Sunday school curriculum has their outline a little different than this book I’m using. But the book I’m using has this as a pair with what we spoke on last week at the center of Colossians. Our Sunday school curriculum has this very section as the center of Colossians. And most commentators would see these verses 1:4 or 1:7, this little section here, however you define it, as the center, the beating heart of the book.

So it’s tremendously significant and important, and it represents a transition. You know, I’ve always talked about this old magazine—maybe it’s still online—Credenda Agenda, that Moscow used to put out from Christ Church. And you know, that term refers to what we believe and what we do, right? Credenda—what’s our creed? What’s our faith? What’s the definition of who we are? What do we believe about things? Doctrine. And then agenda—what’s the agenda? What’s the list of stuff we’re supposed to do?

And with this text, Paul is making that transition. Now, we don’t want to push those distinctions too hard. There certainly were agenda items in the first two chapters, and there’ll certainly be doctrinal items in the last couple of chapters. But there is a movement here. As you can see with these lists of virtues and vices and this strong warning of sexual sin, there is a movement now to an agenda, to more of the practical stuff that flows out of the doctrinal. And very specifically, these putting off of sexual sins and putting off of improper speech and putting on of virtues. These things flow out of our ascension, our union with Christ. And because of that union—not just being resurrected, we talk about that all the time, we’re raised up in Christ, we’re resurrected. But when the Bible uses that term, as it does here, “you’re raised with Christ,” it has a higher elevation to that raising than we normally think of it. Okay?

So flowing out of our ascension life is how we’re supposed to live our lives. And we’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes.

So what we’re going to do here is talk about this great truth—the ascension—and then we’ll talk about what we’re supposed to do in relationship to that. And maybe I’ll save this for just a minute this verse.

Okay. So the first point on your outline is that all this is an ascension text. You know, Jesus is at the right hand of the father, right? And that’s what we read in this text: “You were raised with Christ, seek those which are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God.” So this is not just resurrection, this is ascension.

This is one of at least 33 either direct references or allusions to Psalm 110. Psalm 110 is the most oft-referred to Psalm, I think, in the New Testament. And Psalm 110 is behind this idea of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Gospels, for instance in Chapter 16, verse 19 of Mark say: “So then after the Lord had spoken to them, he was received up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.” So the ascension of Jesus Christ is a movement to a particular location, a particular task. He’s sitting at the right hand of God the Father.

And Psalm 110 is the description of that, right? Psalm 110 relates the ascension to Christ’s lordship 33 times, by the way. We call Jesus Lord because he’s ascended. Lots of verses link Psalm 110, the ascension, and the seating at the right hand of the father with his lordship. Secondly, his rule. He sits at the right hand of the father. The right hand of the father is the place of rule and authority. He’ll rule until all his enemies are made his footstool. And then third, he’s at the right hand of the father making intercession for us.

So this idea of Jesus at the right hand of the father is multifaceted. There are several things he’s doing, but these are some of the major things that are talked about. And these are referred to by our text in Colossians 1. Psalm 110 says this: “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool.” So Paul alludes to that. Jesus is at the right hand of the father. What are we to infer from that? He hums that few little notes of the song of Psalm 110. And we’re to bring the content of 110 into this fact of Christ sitting at the right hand of the father. And it identifies for us the identity of who the Lord Jesus is. And because our identity is tied to the ascended Christ, it helps us understand who we are and what our task in life is.

And the last half of that verse says: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” Jesus is at the right hand of the father. His ascension means that he now is in session. That’s the word that’s used in kind of classical theological terminology. The session of Jesus is his rule and authority at the right hand of the father, overseeing all events on earth to the end that all of his enemies would be brought into worship to him, become his footstool.

So the ascension of Jesus Christ, one of the most neglected aspects of Christianity today, is probably the most important aspect that we need to focus on and bang away at in the context of our church because people have forgotten the whole point of what the gospel is. And the gospel, the good news, is that Jesus has ascended to the right hand of the father and he’ll be there. He won’t return until all his enemies are made his footstool.

That means that our task is united to his task, right? Our task, if we’re ascended, if that’s where our life is, our life is in Christ. It is related to this task. How does he make his enemies his footstool? Well, you know, it’s through the word that comes out of his mouth. It’s a conquering word. And that’s the proclamation of the gospel. But the gospel includes this very important element of ascension.

You know, all too often in Christian churches, we sort of treat the ascension part of the narrative of the Gospel of Luke and then the book of Acts. We treat it like just a device to get Jesus off stage. We know he’s not here anymore. Well, what happened? Well, he’s ascended, and it’s kind of out of sight, out of mind. But in the Bible, the entire thing we celebrate—the advent of Christ—is tied to the death of Christ and his work and the resurrection of Christ and the ascension of Christ. The ascension is an integral part of that.

Paul has no problem moving seamlessly from talking about how we’re dead and buried with Christ, we’re raised with him and therefore ascend above because he’s at the right hand of the father. It’s one event and we’ve truncated it. We’ve truncated it down to personal salvation without the plan of history being that Jesus rules from the right hand of the father until all of his enemies have been made his footstool. So significant.

So the ascension, this is what’s going on. Psalm 110 goes on to say this: “The Lord shall send the rod of your strength out of Zion. Rule in the midst of your enemies. That’s what Jesus is doing at the right hand of the father. Your people, that’s us, shall be willing. They’ll be volunteers in the day of your power. In the beauty of holiness from the womb of the morning, you have the dew of your youth.” His army is us to accomplish this. Now, we do it through the beauty of holiness. And that’s what Paul’s going right on to say: “Don’t be unholy. The sexual transgression. It’s incompatible with your life in Christ.”

“The Lord has sworn and will not relent. You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. The Lord is at your right hand. He shall execute kings in the day of his wrath. He shall judge among the nations. He shall fill the places with dead bodies. He shall execute the heads of many countries. He shall drink of the brook by the way. Therefore, he shall lift up the head.”

And that’s how Paul ends this section in verse 7, right? Abstain from these sexual sins because the wrath of God is coming upon the children of disobedience because of that.

I was listening last night to a talk by Peter Leithart on violence and he quoted H. Richard Niebuhr from his book The Kingdom of God in America. Niebuhr was describing modern liberal Christianity. He said, “We have a God without wrath who brought man without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” That’s the social gospel in the past. And all too often, that’s how we see these things when we leave out the fullness of what the implications of the ascension are.

So the Lord Jesus has ascended to the right hand of the father. And as a result of that, that’s where we are. That’s who we are. This is an ascension text—not just about Jesus but also about us. Philippians 3 says: “Our citizenship is in heaven from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our bodies. Our life is hidden in him and just like in Colossians he says will transform our bodies when they will be revealed.”

Ephesians 2:6 says it even plainer: “He has raised us up together with Christ and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” That’s who you are. Yes, we’ve been raised with Christ from death to life. But more than that, we’ve been made to sit with Jesus at the right hand of the father. That’s who you are. That’s where your citizenship is. That’s where your life is. Because to the Christian, there’s no life without Jesus. The only life that we have is in union with Christ. And if we’re in union with Christ, from which all other blessings flow, one of those blessings is an understanding that we’re at the right hand of the father in Christ and therefore that changes what we’re supposed to do in life.

Therefore, we’re supposed to set our eyes on things above. So we have an ascension text that leads to an ascension imperative, right? We’ve got a piece of information, the most glorious information. You see why I say that now? What could be more glorious? Salvation—great. Raised up—great. But ascended? That our citizenship is in heaven with Christ. This is a glorious truth, brothers and sisters. This is something we should sing about, should excite us, should understand. This is our identity. This is who we are. Not just raised from our sins but seated at the right hand of the father with Christ. Our life. So it’s a tremendous truth, but it brings a tremendous imperative along with it—a required response, right?

The text says that this is who we are. And as a result of that, verse 2 tells us what we’re supposed to do. “Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Set your minds on things above, not on things of the earth. Your life is hidden with Christ. When Christ, who is our life appears, then you also will appear here in glory. Therefore, put to death your members.”

Okay? So we’re to set our mind on things above. Okay? We’re to seek things above. Actually, it’s included in verse 1: “If you were raised with Christ, seek those things.” So two different words are used. We’re to seek what’s above. We’re to set our minds on what’s above.

This word “seek” is ongoing in the Greek. It’s ongoing tense. It doesn’t just mean seek it once. It means this is our lifelong orientation—to understand everything we do in life by means of seeking the things that are above. Now, it’s easy to get stuck here. It’s easy. This tie is sort of a symbol today. This is sort of what we think about. Can you see the tie around? This is kind of what we think about. Heavenly things, yes. Angels, yes. Floating on clouds, playing harps, you know—”set your mind upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face. The things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.”

Now, that’s half true, but it’s only half true because what Paul has just warned us about is asceticism, right? He’s just said these things—this fasting and required fasts. By the way, I’m not putting down fasting. Fasting is a good thing done properly by the Christian, right? Fasting is okay. The apostles fasted to set apart Paul and Barnabas. We’ve fasted and we’ve had elections for elders here. I didn’t mean to imply that all fasting was something wrong last week. But these are people who are judging you unless they keep the fast they think you should keep. And it’s also people who think by their fasting somehow they’re going to ascend to these heavenly, platonic ideals. You know, really, this is Greek philosophy at the root of this stuff—that somehow Christianity is about spiritual truths having nothing to do with economics or sex or you know, what we do here on earth and our daily tasks.

We’re Christian workers. That just means we’re heavenly minded. We’re thinking about Jesus in heaven all day, and it’s got nothing really to do with what we work. That’s not what Paul’s talking about. He’s just critiqued that, you know, strongly saying that’s no use. It’s a distraction. And in fact, it’s worse than being non-useful. It’s actually a distraction because it starts to pull you away from Jesus.

You know, it’s interesting because Christians continue to think that fasting or not drinking this or not smoking that, you know, these things—these are the things that are going to make you holy. What made you holy in the Old Testament—feasting or fasting? Well, those of you who’ve been at RCC very long know that there were over 80 required feast days in the Old Testament. There was one required fast day: the Day of Atonement, to afflict your soul. So if we want to take even the Old Testament as an example, you know, fasting isn’t the key to spiritual success. Feasting is. Okay? Fasting has a role. I’m not putting it down. But I’m just saying this is not what Paul is talking about. Nothing about—it has nothing about the created order.

The created order is from God. When he’s using these categories of above and below, he’s not talking spatially, okay? He’s talking ethically. He’s saying that our life is hidden in Christ. There’s a reality. It’s like when we pray, “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” When we come to heaven—and that’s what Hebrews says we do in heavenly worship—it’s not so that we can forget about our world. It’s so that we can be reoriented to the world properly.

We’re to seek the things above. And right now, that’s what you’re doing. My intent is to give you things from above by which you can better fulfill your tasks on earth. So yes, turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face. The things of earth will grow strangely dim. But then the things of earth will come into focus better. You see, because we walk around in a fallen state, even though we’re redeemed and we’re using old eyes. And what God wants us to do is to focus on Jesus. How do we do that? We’ll talk about it in a minute. To focus upon Jesus so that we can put the world into proper focus, so that we can go about walking in Christ, not pulled away from all of this life, but walking in it with our life in the ascended Christ, inhabiting the world so that the ascended Jesus is ruling in the world, making all his enemies his footstool through his body, which is us—the Christians on the earth—because we’re seeing things from a heavenly perspective, a perspective apart from the fall. And we re-engage in the world with that perspective and all things become new.

I think that’s the idea here, but it’s energetic, prophetic work. This word to seek the things above or to set your mind on these things above. The implication here is it takes intentionality. Again, this big intentional word we’ve used a lot for the last few years. It doesn’t just happen. You don’t just float through your life every day, get up, do your thing, going no. It takes intentionality to try to understand the world from God’s perspective. It takes intentionality to think about Jesus, to think about his perspective. What’s he doing in terms of the world? He’s making intercession, but he’s also transforming it.

What is his view on your work, on your marriage, on your children? He’s going to talk about that immediately, of course, right? He’s going to go on in just a short few verses here to say, “Oh, your wife’s not important. Your kids, oh no, these are things of the earth. Your work? No, certainly not your work.” That’s not at all what he says. The result of having our identity ascended in Christ, the result of that—the result of setting our minds on heavenly things—is a renewed ability to understand our roles in our families: husbands, wives, parents, children. In our workplace: slaves, masters, right? And in everything else.

So it’s not disconnected, this kind of seeking. It is very connected to the things that we actually are called upon to do. These are not necessary things we got to put up with until we get to go away to heaven and forget all of this. In fact, you don’t get to do that ever—go to heaven and forget all this—because as the Bible clearly teaches and as the confessions of the church clearly teach, heaven’s coming here, okay? We’re not going to heaven permanently. We go to heaven until Jesus returns and he returns here to earth. There’s a renewed heaven and a renewed earth. They match. They come together. God’s will on heaven is done on earth.

So don’t think you’re going to get away from this permanently. This is your eternal dwelling place. But it’ll be a heavenly version of earth. But this is your eternal dwelling place. This is where Jesus brings us back to. Okay.

So Paul is pivoting from credenda to an agenda here. Our life is life in Christ. Secondly, the orientation of the mind and will, right? So these words—to set your mind on or to seek—this involves our minds. We’re supposed to think about things, but it involves our wills. It’s not a thought experiment. It’s to have us change what we do. So it involves both our volition as well as our intellect—think and do. And as I say on the outline, and I’ve said here, it’s continuous, right? It involves significant exertion.

Word Bible Commentary says it implies sober consideration, firm purpose to have this heavenly perspective on everything that we do. So in Galatians 2:20, “I’ve been crucified with Christ. It’s no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God.” Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Our only life. So everything apart from this ascension reality is a death style.

And Paul will turn to one of those death styles in just a couple of minutes in terms of sexual sin. And it’s not homosexuality he’ll be talking about—it includes that, but it’s broader than that—it’s a death style. Our life is hidden in Christ, is at the right hand of the father. And the evangelical church has tried to take the significant truth that Christ dwells in us by faith through the Spirit, which is true, but we seem to now locate Jesus at the center of our being rather than at the right hand of the father. And that is a tremendously skewed perspective based on the totality of scripture and particularly this given text.

Above and below, flesh and spirit. In Romans, this is the same language when Paul talks about above and then the earth below as in Romans 8:6: “To be carnally minded is death but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” So in other terms, in other epistles, instead of “above” and “the earth,” Paul will use “fleshly minded” and “spiritually minded,” and it’s the same thing that’s going on here—this above and below stuff.

It isn’t asceticism, and I would recommend this book. I have it on your handout called The Flight from Humanity. I’ll bet you almost nobody here has ever even heard of the book, let alone read it. In the early years of RCC, this was everybody read it. Small, 70 pages, I think. You ought to read it. It’s absolutely astonishing.

I knew a ministerial student when our church first started. He was one of our founding members. And he was headed toward the pastorate. And he read that book, Flight from Humanity, dropped out of the pastor-search, became an engineer and devoted his life to try to produce privatized systems of essential commodities for cities rather than state-run. That’s the impact of the book. Nothing wrong with being a seminary student. We need more of them. We need pastors to come out of this church. But you know, we—the church, not this one so much, but other churches; our church to a certain extent—you know, we churches would regularly, for instance, have prayer times when the ministers—people going off to seminaries or people going off to the mission field—we’d bring them up here and pray for them. And then you men and women who are going off into the workforce, selling business supplies or, you know, electricity or food at the market. Well, yeah, we care about you, too. But that was sort of the idea.

Now, hopefully in this church we don’t have that thing going on. But The Flight from Humanity rushed in and he attacks this idea—that there are these spiritual things and then these things that are not spiritual that are involved in our tasks here on earth—and just demolishes it. And it’s linked to Greek philosophy. He talks about Neoplatonism in the book quite a bit. And he and this is why when a number of us went down to Calvin to spend a week with Rushdoony years ago—we were starting an elder training program and we asked him what he would do. And he said, “Well, the first thing you got to do in training for pastors is economics. Why? Well, it’s the law of the house. That’s what economics means. And you see, it roots out men who think that economics is some non-spiritual topic, right?

We need pastors who understand economics, can run the affairs of the church properly, and understand the need to have men and women apply proper economics in their homes and in their businesses. Not because it kind of is pragmatically well, but because it’s the glory of God to do those things correctly. Anyway, okay. So the book is about that. And so this text is telling us not to flee from our humanity, but to embrace our humanity with the ascended eyes of the Lord Jesus Christ.

How do we do this? Well, on the text on the outline, generally: Bible, Gospel, Church. So, you know, instead of this tie, I think my other tie is worn out, but the Foresters once gave me a tie with old letters—illuminated letters, right?—and it kind of showed the importance and significance of the word. And I think these letters were from various Bibles, you know, the illuminated letters. That would be the tie I would have put on today in contrast to this one. This is good. It reminds us to be spiritually minded. But the tie, you see, with letters from illustrated Bibles, that’s the key.

How do you set your eyes upon Jesus? Well, you might try the Gospels. Now, he’s at the right hand of the father. It’s recording his life here on earth, but it is a completely inherent description of who Jesus is. In fact, the whole Word of God is a description of Jesus. So if you’re going to turn your eyes on Christ, you’d want to turn your eyes to the scriptures and understand what they say, right? This is the word that came from heaven. It brought the heavenly perspective. So the Bible and an understanding of the Bible is an obvious place, particularly the Gospels.

I might have mentioned this before, but Gordon and I heard Paul Miller, son of Jack Miller who started the Sonship movement, speak at the Spurgeon Fellowship a month or two ago and he was saying that one of the things we’ve sort of lost in evangelicalism is kind of the life of Christ. By which he meant—he’s now reading his Gospels regularly, not to get the details of the stories, but to look at Jesus, to try to understand his cadences. When does he speak? When does he sit and listen and not speak? How does he interact with different kinds of people? What’s Jesus like? And the Gospels give us quite a bit of that. And the Epistles, you know, are simply a reflection of the Gospels. And the Old Testament is the preparation for the Gospels.

So in a very real sense, reading the Gospels, looking for who Jesus is right, is one way to turn our eyes on Christ and to seek the things that are above. And the Church, right? The Church is the body of Christ. And so to think that you can seek out Jesus at the right hand of the father and set your mind upon him without setting your mind upon your brothers and sisters in Christ is wrong. Fundamentally wrong. So those are general things.

And then we have some specific things. And here’s where we’re going to talk about sex because the text does. This is what the text says. If I can find the text again. Okay, here we are. Okay. But what does it give us then?

We’ve died. Christ life appears. Therefore—so how do we do it? “Set your minds on things above. Therefore, put to death your members which are on the earth: Fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Because of these things, the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience.”

He gives us great motivation. First, he gives us the motivation because our ascended life in Christ is absolutely incompatible with this list. Now, he’s going to go on from here to talk about put offs and put ons, but he prime frontloads these particular lists. Why? It seems like the text wants us to connect this up in a way that’s more emphatic, more emphasized than what he’ll say in a couple of minutes. But more emphatic than that is these front things. I think because they are seen as particularly damaging to an ascended life in Christ. Particularly incompatible with it. Particularly damaging. And because of that, the wrath of God comes against them.

Okay. Now, you say, “Well, Dennis, yeah, I can see the first thing in the list there—that’s sex, right? Fornication.” Yeah, it’s porneia. You know this word. It involves all forms of illicit sexual activity. Every one of them, which would include homosexuality, but believe you me, it’s not limited to that. It’s not normally that’s porneia—pornography, right, on the internet. So it starts there, but these other words—uncleanness. That’s ritual uncleanness, but in the Bible, this uncleanness is almost always linked to sexual sin and the impurity that results from sexual sin. It’s linked to it here and it’s linked to it in other texts of the Bible. I think I’ve listed some on your handout. You can look them up later.

Passion. This particular word also is used frequently of sexual sin. Evil desire. Desire is not a bad thing. Passion is probably not a good interpretation, but it means like, you know, an inordinate desire or something. And then this evil desire—bad desire. Desire is good, but inordinate desire as the Gentiles exercise themselves in. Look up the verses I’ve listed on your text. And then finally, covetousness, which is idolatry.

So those first four, if you look up the verses I show you on there, it’s sex he’s talking about. There’s no doubt in my mind that those four words are emblematic of sexual sin in its various forms and its results. And then he ties that to greed and covetousness. Why? Because the man who and woman who engages in sexual sin is greedy for something that’s not theirs. In the case of married people, which is the bulk of people Paul’s writing to, greed means you’ve got a wife, you’ve got a husband, but you’re greedy. You’re covetous. You want more and more and more, right? Billy Idol—”More, more, more.”

And so I believe this text is telling us about the tremendous significance of sexual sin. I’m tired of making excuses for sin being in the Christian context. We’re talking about sin. It’s because God says it’s a real big deal. It’s incompatible for Christians to live their ascended lives in relationship to sexual sin. And all of this is matched by idolatry, of course, because anytime you want something you don’t have and you seek illicit ways to get it, you’re saying that’s what’s going to make you happy, not what God has given to you. And so it’s always idolatry.

Idolatry is substituting any of these good things—good women, good men, good clothes, good food, good money. They’re all good. But seeking those apart from the word of God and they become an idol, then that brings destruction upon you, brings the wrath of God on you. So idolatry is understanding the basic motivation here.

Now Paul is not saying that sex is bad. It’s exactly the opposite. Why is it so tough for people in our day to combat sexual sin? Well, first of all, it’s not our day. First of all, Paul frontloads this. There’s a reason. Because this is what everybody was doing in the gentile world. Okay? So it’s always hard. Why is it so hard? Because it’s so important. Because it’s one of God’s best gifts to humanity. And if you don’t love God and you want to spoil his image bearers, you’re going to take that best gift and twist it to make it into the worst thing people can do. That’s what you’re going to do if you’re Satan. Okay? That’s why it’s so difficult because it’s so important.

And that’s the point of the spear for Satan to try to get rid of Christianity in this country. Oh yeah, there’s all kinds of other things he’s doing, but one of the biggest techniques right now is the resulting pornography, people living together, illicit sexual relationships, men and women having sex with people they shouldn’t be having sex with. It’s a big deal.

Now, now look. He’s just been telling us about the ascension and heavenly minded, and now he’s got us down talking about sex. There’s a relationship. The Bible is not anti-sex. The whole Song of Solomon is about how wonderful marital sex is. And in fact, the scriptures tell us that if you’re in a marriage relationship—with most adults are—and if you don’t have sexual relationships within the context of marriage, big problem. Big problem.

You see, and we’ve talked about these texts before. But the texts tell us: Hey, your body belongs to the other person. Your mess is my mess, right? We’re one in this thing. And if you abstain from each other without consent for a period of prayer, it opens up opportunities for the devil to bring temptation to both of you. And you know, this is reality. I don’t want to—you know, if you want to have an extended conversation with somebody, don’t make it with me, because to me it’s as plain as the nose on your face that a marital relationship, the one flesh relationship, is at the core of it and needs to continue to have one flesh relationship going on, or people go apart. That’s just what reality is, and it’s what God tells us. Okay.

Sex is good. Sex is important. I think particularly for men, you know, the studies say that the time a man feels closest to his wife, the bonding chemicals are firing away. Finally gets up to her level of bonding in terms of chemicals in the brain is right after sex. So sex is good and sex is glue, okay? And so it’s bondedness. I think that women tend to have a bit more of a problem with sex being good because men are such pigs. And I think men tend to have a little more problem with sex being glue. They’re always have the wandering eye.

But if we remember those things and remember that sexual sin—and I would include the absence of sexual relations in a marriage—is incompatible with the ascension life of Christ, okay. It’s incompatible.

Now look, there was a movie, The Year of Living Dangerously, right? So I’m thinking, could we have a year of living holy? Could we have a year—this coming year—at which the men and women of this church make intentional commitments to follow up this sermon, these tremendous truths of our ascended life, the tremendous imperative to set our minds on things above? Can we follow up with a commitment to avoid the one set of things that Paul says is incompatible with our ascension life in Christ? Can we seek together, men and women in this church, young men and women as well, to drive out these sexual sins from our lives?

Now, how do you do it? Well, you know, you accentuate the positive. If you’re in a marriage relationship, you involve yourself in making no provision for the flesh. You got devices that are particularly, you know, temptations for you. Set it up with blocks and guards. Can you get through three or four locks and bust into somebody’s house? Yeah, but it’s more difficult. Can you get through a couple three locks on your computer? Yeah, but you know, if you have that kind of heart problem, you’ve missed the whole point anyway, and there’s probably not much helping you, honestly. You should just confess to it. We’ll excommunicate you, and hopefully the Lord God regenerates you. Seriously.

But the rest of us, we can connect to doing the small steps that may well be useful by making no provision for the flesh, maybe building some accountability, but you know, the Bible doesn’t stress accountability as much as it does your own personal mortification of sin. It tells you put these things to death, drive a stake through its heart. You know, that happens, but it doesn’t happen if we’re not intentional about it.

I don’t think God sometimes can just deliver us likely. He won’t most of the time. Can we do that? You know, let’s just think about this for a few seconds. Think about what I’m talking about and the significance of sexual sin and destroying your relationship with the ascended Christ, blunting your witness, removing your flourishing, removing life. It’s a death style. To engage in pornography is a death style. It’s incompatible with life in Christ.

We just think about it. Could you maybe make a commitment? If you struggle in this area right now, I’m serious, to have this year open up as a year in which you’ll remember it—that you set your mind on things above and you put to death the sins of earth that get in the way of your effectiveness for Jesus Christ. If you need help, prayer, talk to me. Talk to a friend. Talk to your community group. You know, this is really important.

All right, I’m almost out of time. So let’s move to the last point. What is the last point? The last point is something very interesting. It says our life is hidden in Christ, right? That’s interesting. And there are all kinds of implications. I’ve got some verses on your handout about how God hides us in the palm of his hand, right? And earlier in Colossians we had talked about how our glory was reserved in heaven. So there’s a sense in which our life being hidden in Christ, as the text tells us, means it’s secure. It’s secure because Jesus at the right hand of the father is far above, in terms of imagery, principalities and powers that would seek to take your life away.

So there’s a security to this—that our life is hidden in Christ. But our lives are going to be revealed when he returns. Now to me, I think that by way of implication here, he’s telling us that this resurrected, ascended perspective on all things in our lives, I think that’s hidden from us as well as others. Our life is hidden in Christ to us.

What does it mean for me to be a Christian husband? I think that’s hidden from me, particularly early on in our relationship, our marriage. What does it mean to be a Christian businessman? For some of you, that was hidden. It’s becoming more and more revealed what it looks like as a person who is heavenly minded, ascended with Christ, his life is there. How does that change what he does in the business place? How does it change our politics? You see, it’s bringing the ascended life of Christ into the earth in your person. And you don’t know what that looks like. It’s hidden. You become actualized—because modern word, right? But your sense of identity, you don’t know what it is except to say this text tells us our identity is in Christ.

And as we seek those things that are above and as we see the things in our world, whether it’s our marriages, our father-child relationships—we’re going to talk about this a lot in the next few weeks, right? Because the text moves on to those things. And we’ll try to look at those things and see: How do we inhabit the role of a Christian husband in a way that’s distinct and different from a heavenly perspective? How do I inhabit the role of a son? How do I inhabit the role of a father, a master, a slave, an employer, an employee? He’s going to tell us how to do that. But it begins here. It begins with an intentionality and seeking the things above and understanding that our life is hidden even from ourselves.

And so we don’t know yet what that’s going to look like. And over the course of our lives, it’s revealed more and more what it means for the life of Christ to be yours in your politics and your education and in your familial relationships and in your neighborhood and in your recreations. All of those things are categories or orders. Paul doesn’t say jettison them all. He said God created that stuff at the creation. It was very good. And he’s going to make it good again.

But it’s not obvious how. It’s okay not to know how to do things. Okay? Your life is hidden in Christ. But as you focus upon the resurrected Christ by reading his word, by talking with Christians, by looking at the life of Christ in the Gospels—how does he interact? What’s his personal relationships like? What’s the cadence of his life? As you do those things, you see, we inhabit those roles and we begin to realize our life becomes revealed a little and a little and a little in him. Full revelation, the last day, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, then it will be revealed. But between now and then, I think we’re supposed to think that there are these things that are happening that are significant.

Let me end with a quote. This is from a book. What’s the name of the book? Okay, this is from a commentary on Colossians by Christopher Sites. This is from the Brazos Theological Commentary series and I got this notion from Sites. Here’s what he says:

“But inside older categories, we are bearers of a new humanity in our bodies in Christ.” And in those categories, he’s saying like husband, wife, worker, politic, whatever it is. In those categories, we are being renewed in Christ in ways that are hidden to our own knowledge of what we would call our self-identity. We have no essential self-identity. To create declinings of our essential selves after the work of the one man and the one cross is to encroach on what Paul here calls our life hidden in Christ and God.

So in other words, it’s not just like we take our old man and we make him better or we have like declinings of it, different versions of it, the old man. No, there’s the new man and we have the same categories, right? We have the same activities we engage in. But the point is, it’s not going to just look like things getting a little better for that old man. The new man in Christ is going to come out in these relationships.

You know, when Paul tells husbands or wives—rather, when Paul, let’s put it a different way. When Paul does not tell wives in Ephesians or in Colossians to obey your husbands, that was radical, new covenant, ascended Christ idea to its recipients. In the Roman world, women were ontologically inferior. They were second-class citizens. They were just supposed to obey. And Paul was so radical and counterintuitive when he refuses to tell wives to obey. And we get it all mixed up. But see, that’s what I’m going to—we’re going to talk about that in the future. But the point is, it’s not just declensions of the old world in which men ruled and women just obey, or ruled in other ways, deceitful ways. No, he says:

“If there’s anything special to our minds, to set our minds on, it is that a degree of hiddenness in our self-knowledge is there by design in Christ. That’s an important statement. You don’t know who you are because that’s the design of Christ—that you would reveal, find out more and more—as you set your eyes on him and by the power of the Holy Spirit live life, not death. You’ll see who you are in Christ. It’s a design element. It is built into the present reliance in him and his life. It cannot be overcome in the nature of the case and it extends to sexuality, health, knowledge, science. All will yield its deepest realities and none will make any higher sense than the one new man.”

I think that’s great stuff. I think this text has given us an incredible, astonishing fact. We’re ascended with Christ at the right hand of the father. It has given us a life comprehensive duty to seek those things above where Christ is. That’s the point of things above. That’s where Jesus is—to seek Christ, to set our minds on him. And then it’s given us, I think, a sense of inquiry, excitement. And you wait for what the Christmas presents will be. We sort of wait to see how our life—Christ’s life in us—will be revealed in all these categories as we put to death the old man and live in the life of the new ascended Christ.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this text. I do pray, Lord God, for the men and women here that struggle with sexual sin, which is probably all of us in different ways, that you would make this a year in which we intentionally move away from those things. Lord God, bless us in those commitments and bless us as we look with excitement to what will become over the next year and reveal to us the life of Christ, which is hidden in us now in ways that we’ll know more and more as we walk in obedience, as we rely upon faith connected to Jesus in union and communion with him through his ascension. Bless us, Father, in Jesus’ name. Amen.