Union with Christ (part 2)

Well, brothers and sisters, if you were here last week, you heard my deviation from our normal sequence of things in 1 Timothy, and I introduced the theme last week of union with Christ. You don't have to understand or have heard that message to hear this one, though I would commend it to you to go back, you can listen to it online, union with Christ.

And today we're dealing with the second part of a two-part series on this theme of union with our Lord. If we were to go back last week to Ephesians chapter one that we were in, you don't have to turn there, I'm just saying if we were to go back in time, we might have titled that sermon, Union with Christ Defined.

What does it mean that we are in Christ? In many respects, it was an introductory sermon, and I think what we concluded with was that to be in union with Christ speaks of the believer's new life in Christ and with Christ.

That union with Christ is, as we defined it last week, the intimate, vital, and spiritual relationship that every Christian enjoys with his or her Lord. It's a union whereby we come to receive all of the blessings that Christ shares with us, including even himself.

And when we were in Ephesians one, we saw how this union with Christ grants us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places so that in union with him, we enjoy the privilege of being chosen and redeemed, of being granted an inheritance, of being sealed by the Spirit, and all of this to the end that God would be praised for his glorious grace in Christ.

And I hope that if you were with us last week, you were able to conclude with me and with Charles Spurgeon that there is no joy in this world like union with Christ. And now that we have that underneath the hood, as it were, we're gonna hit the road and we're gonna look at what it means not only to understand union with Christ, but to live in union with Christ, to live in union.

As you know, it is one thing to understand a given truth in theory, and it's a completely different thing to apply that truth in everyday life. And for some of you who know me well, maybe some of you know that I'm a bit of an aviation nerd.

If you go to my algorithms on YouTube or other things like that, I think even my wife gets suggested videos now on aviation because of my enthusiasm for it. To use an illustration from aviation, it is one thing to sit in the classroom and learn about the physics of flight, to learn how fast-moving and slow-moving air interact with an airfoil in order to create lift.

It's one thing to study in a textbook or on a computer the difference between air speed and ground speed and mach speed. And then it is a completely different animal to strap yourself into the left seat of an airplane, to taxi that plane to the numbers at the end of the runway, to push the throttle forward, to feel the plane move forward, to, for the very first time, pull back on the yoke so that the wheels leave the ground, to feel the force of that air push against your inputs as you seek to control the plane, and the force of gravity exert itself against your whole body as you leave the ground.

In a moment like that, you learn the immeasurable difference between the theoretical and the experiential, what it means to be in a simulator and what it means to be in the air, in control of that airplane.

And today as we talk about what it means to live in union with Christ, if you can picture it this way, we're leaving the classroom, we're putting on our jumpsuits now, and we're learning what it means to live and move and have our being in experiential union with the Lord Jesus Christ.

What it means to walk with Christ, what it means when we read in passages like John 15 that we are to abide in him and so bear much fruit, what it means to live to the glory of God in and with and through Jesus Christ.

Union with Christ in Colossians 3:1-4

So if you would, we were in Ephesians one last week, we're going to go to Colossians, somewhat of a sister epistle, to Colossians chapter three and verse one. Last week we had something of a puritanical sermon outline.

It was a six point sermon. This week it will be more manageable. We'll look at four different truths and four different verses in Colossians chapter three verses one through four, and we'll read it and then we'll survey it some before we get right into it.

This is what the Apostle Paul writes inspired by the Holy Spirit of God. It reads, 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, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. For when Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Now before we get into the substance of the text, it's always right and appropriate to consider the greater context of any passage that we are in. For those of you who have been in our Colossians series that we've been doing on Thursdays, you'll remember some of these details that Paul as he is writing to Colossae or as it's sometimes informally known as Coloss, he is writing to a church that is in the Lysis Valley, in Phrygia, in the Roman province of Asia.

So if you were to travel to the middle of Turkey today, you'd find the ruins perhaps, part of the ruins at least of Colossae. And from this letter, we can learn a few clues about the letter and the occasion that led up to the writing of Paul's letter.

It's important to note and we can see it in chapter one that Paul had never actually met the saints in Colossae, that he had only heard about them, he writes in chapter one and that it's very likely that one of Paul's co-laborers in the gospel, Epaphras was the one who first preached the gospel in this region and planted the church in Colossae.

And while the saints in this church were excelling in their faith, you can look at this with me in chapter one in verse three, where Paul says, we always thank God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, since we heard of your faith in Christ and the love that you have for all the saints.

While this church was excelling in this faith and this love and this hope that they were experiencing as new Christians, it was not long before false teachers came in and began to plant all kinds of damning errors in the minds of the people.

This is something that for us as a young church, we would do well to take note of, that this is the modus operandi of our enemy to come into young, growing, thriving local churches and to plant damning ideas that will tear it apart from the inside out.

And these false teachers came, and as they did, they introduced a medley of errors, a group of errors that has simply become known as the Colossian heresy. Maybe you've heard that term before. And as part of this Colossian heresy, what we see, if we can read it back through the text, is that there was a minimizing of the supremacy of the preeminence of Christ, a minimizing of his person and his work, and with the suppression of Christ came in the ushering in of a combination of Jewish legalism, of different rites and ceremonies and days and feasts and celebrations, along with pagan asceticism, the harsh treatment of the body, perhaps a precursor of Gnosticism.

And so Paul does, in this letter to the Colossians, what he does in all of his letters. If you can think about the structure of the Pauline epistles. The first half of his letter, what does he do? He offers a towering theological perspective or response to the issues that are at hand.

In the first two chapters, in fact, we get something of a view of Paul's exalted Christology, that he gives us some of the most rich and exalted statements about Christ in all of scripture in chapters one and two of Colossians.

For instance, if you look at Colossians chapter one and verse 15, what do we read? He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. So that when we look at the Lord Jesus Christ, if we could go back 2 ,000 years and see him in the world, in the flesh, we would say that is the visible image of the invisible God.

If we look in Colossians chapter one and verse 19, what do we read? Paul says, for in him, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. And he elaborates on this in chapter two and verse nine. For in him, that is in Christ, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.

Colossians chapter one is enough to silent any intellectually honest Arian or Jehovah's Witness. In Christ, we have God in human flesh. And as Paul goes on, he then takes on an offensive approach against the various facets of the Colossian heresy.

And he demonstrates that these errors are in total contradiction to the Christ who was first preached among them and the person and work of this Christ in whom the Colossians had believed. After he does this, he goes on to the second half of his letter, where we find ourselves in Colossians chapter three.

And as he goes from the life and the person of Christ, he goes next to the application of his exalted Christology. How this Christology is applied in the life and in the church and in the family and in the workplace.

And so Paul gives us all of these things and you really could, if we wanted to look closely at it, say that there is a verse that summarizes the whole letter in the second chapter, in the sixth verse of that second chapter.

So that in Colossians two and verse six, we read this. Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him. Last time we talked about what it means to be in Christ. Today we're going to talk about what it means to walk in Christ, to live in Christ.

So as we arrive then at Colossians chapter three and verse one, we find that transition point between the triumphant Christology of Paul and the application of this Christology. It's not an exaggeration either to say that these first four verses in Colossians three really form the climax of the letter.

It's interesting that the name of Christ is mentioned four times in as many verses. Sinclair Ferguson, speaking on this passage, says that there is probably no more comprehensive summary of the Christian life to be found in all of the New Testament.

And on the theme of our union with Christ, he says this. It provides the New Testament's most complete picture of what it means to be in Christ. And so in these first four verses, we have two imperative statements and two indicative statements.

Two things that tell us what we must do, what we must be, and two statements that tell us what we already are in him. And these teach us how to live in union with Christ. And so the first that we'll look at is in verse one, and it is this.

We are to seek Christ who is above. Verse one reads, if then you have been raised with Christ. Seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. In verse one, what Paul is doing is he is building upon a theme that is very prominent in his letter to the Colossians.

Not only is it prominent in his letter to Colossians, though it's prominent in almost every mention of, every one of his mentions of union with Christ. And it is the theme of the Christian's death in Christ and the Christian's new life with Christ.

We see this more fully when we look at the whole context of our passage. If we just look back to Colossians chapter two and verse 20 for a moment, there's a little, in my Bible, a little paragraph marker.

It tells us it's the beginning of a new paragraph, it is intertwined with our passage. And it reads in verse 20, if Christ, if with Christ, with Christ, you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why as if you were still alive, sorry, why as if you were still alive in the world do you submit to regulations, do not handle, do not taste, do not touch?

In this verse, what Paul is doing is he is making the argument that the Christian has died to all of the regulations that the Colossian heretics have been trying to push into the church. They have died to those legal demands and therefore they are free from that form of legalism that these Colossian heretics are seeking to promote.

And at the same time, chapter three in verse one demonstrates that the Christian has not only died with Christ, but the Christian has been made alive with Christ, not to be consumed with regulations here below, but to seek that which is above, namely Christ who is seated at the right hand of God.

If we look closely, I know probably most of you aren't working with a Greek translation of the New Testament as we go along, but it is interesting the language that Paul uses when he speaks about being raised with Christ.

The language he uses actually seeks to strengthen our understanding of our union with the Lord. And when he uses that word raised with Christ, it's actually a compound verb that could be translated co-resurrected with Christ, that it's not just raised with Christ, but we are part and parcel like a pilot and co-pilot, one together.

And it's a concept that we find all throughout scripture as we interact with this idea of union with Christ. In Romans chapter six, you'll know oftentimes before we baptize someone, what do we speak about?

That someone was buried with Christ in baptism and raised with him in newness of life. In Colossians chapter two, Paul says almost the same thing when he says we were buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God.

And as Paul speaks to this co-resurrection, this is key. He's not just speaking about us being made alive with Christ. He is not just speaking about even particularly or primarily are being born again in and with Christ, but he is actually speaking about the Christian being elevated to a higher plane as it were.

The Christian has not only been made a new creature, not only been brought to life, but that we have been raised and that where Christ is now in a spiritual sense, we are with him to some degree. Now I know that sounds odd.

I want you to see this with me in a couple of places. I want you to see it with me first in the immediate context in chapter two and verse 20. Paul says, why as if you were still alive in the world do you submit to regulations?

Why as if you were still alive here down on the earth? He does not want us to think of ourselves solely as being alive here on the earth, but alive as if with Christ above. Now that sounds like an odd idea.

I want to demonstrate to you that it is thoroughly biblical. If we go to Ephesians chapter two for a moment, perhaps like me, you're a fan of Ephesians chapter two, where it speaks about the depravity of man and the regenerating work of God, how we were dead in our trespasses and sins and how God raised us up.

And in chapter two in verse five, we read this. Even when we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ. So in union with him, by grace you have been saved. And here it is, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

Notice that is in the past tense. So the Christian has in a spiritual sense already in union with Christ, been raised with Christ. If you can believe it, what this means is that if you are in Christ, you've not only been raised with him, you have not only been born again with him, but in a spiritual sense, you have joined him so that even now you share, in the words of John MacArthur, the preeminent glory in the heavenly places in the supernatural realm where God reigns.

It is true that we are alive on this earth. You and I are here, that we're here in the flesh, that our minds are here, that our souls are here. And yet there is a part of us in union with Christ that is already enjoying the experiences of heaven in the presence of God.

And the question is, how can this be? I'm seeing puzzled looks. How in the world can this be? Douglas Moo says this, without denying the reality of a future resurrection with Christ. So not denying that future resurrection.

Paul, following his typical already and not yet paradigm, asserts that those who belong to Christ have already experienced a spiritual resurrection with Christ because they are in him. And Christ has himself been raised to sit at the right hand of the Father so that believers can be said to have been raised with him.

And at the end of verse one, we're told where this place is, that we have been granted, brothers and sisters, spiritual access to God at the right hand of God. Paul here uses the most frequently quoted Old Testament book in the New Testament when he looks at Psalm 110 in verse one.

There we read, the Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. Paul does this to demonstrate the nature of our standing and our access before God. Christian, through your union with Christ, your place right now is a place of triumph in the presence of Almighty God, of a place of unparalleled access to God.

It's the application of the very thing that I said last week when I said that in union with Christ, we not only get the justification that Christ gives us, but we get Christ himself so that in union with him, each one of us at any moment can enter into the presence of Almighty God without hindrance.

That he is with us and that we are with him. That we not only receive justification and sanctification and blessings through him, but we receive him. We receive the awesome, the wondrous, the stupefying, the glorious, everlasting access to our God and our king.

Hence then, why God commands us in this passage to seek the things that are above where Christ is. Because though our existence in this world is often characterized by the minutia of living on this earth and dealing with work and traffic and with snowy roads and with lousy civil services or whatever it might be, at the very same time, there is a part of us united with Christ, in Christ, with Christ, even at the right hand of the throne of God.

And brethren, I want to ask you, does this sermon find you seeking the things that are above? Do you live as if in the presence of Almighty God? Because you are. We've been freed, Paul is telling us here, from an empty, dead, and legalistic religion and granted a place of direct access and immediate communion with God.

So that Paul could tell the Ephesians in Ephesians chapter two and verse 12, remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God in the world, but now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

So that we have been ushered into the presence of God. But the sad reality is how few professing believers there are who can be bothered to draw near. And where do you stand on the matter? We're told to seek him, to seek that which is above.

It is not a suggestion. It is not a recommendation. These are not filler words in our New Testaments. This is a command. And brethren, I implore you with the delegated authority of Almighty God, as one who is here with the word of God, to seek Christ, to seek Christ who is above.

John Stott says in the point, the Christian is simply a man who has been granted a relationship with the exalted Christ at God's right hand. That is who you are in your identity. One who is with Christ, seated with him.

He says, this takes us to the very summit of the Christian experience in this life. It is to daily hold fast to Christ as the center and source of all of our joys. It is to enter his gates with praise and come into his courts with thanksgiving.

Brethren, the reality is we're so well acquainted with living in the valley that we don't know what to do with the summit. Many of us do not know, we cannot remember the last time we visited the summit.

But God invites us to the summit that we might walk with and cherish and love and know our God. Brethren, we must get alone, get away, do all that we must so that we might seek him and know him. We read in Psalm chapter 27 in verse eight, and I invite you to say with the psalmist, you have said, seek my face.

My heart says to you, your face, Lord, do I seek. Brethren, we have been granted union with Christ and that union comes with communion. And are we enjoying that communion? I think of one brother who said, if you were to ask the average husband, what is your favorite thing about your wife?

I know that if I were asked that question, my wife were, maybe it's one of those hidden camera shows. My wife is on the other side of the wall listening in, and I said, well, my favorite thing about my wife is her cooking, it's her cleaning.

My favorite thing about, she has nice clothing. And I list all of these things that are the blessings that come with my wife. Brothers and sisters, that's what we do all the time. And my favorite thing about Christ is his justification.

But my favorite thing about Christ is his glorification. My favorite thing about Christ is his word, or it's this, or it's that. But brothers and sisters, don't you see that the normative Christian life, the normative answer to that question is this, my favorite thing about Christ is Christ.

My favorite thing about Christ is knowing him and walking with him and having communion with him. That I am in him and that he is in me and we love one another and I know him. That there won't be a day when he comes and he says to me, I never knew you.

But the substance of union with Christ is that communion with Christ. And that everything leads us there. And brethren, I wanna get thoroughly practical. Some of you have heard me say this before, I know.

But to know him, to seek him, it requires planning. It requires forethought. It's really interesting. When I think about the times in my life, when my prayer life, my communion with the Lord, my seeking after him and finding him has been most robust, most rewarded.

I remember telling my wife this one day. I came to the realization that if I want to have a fruitful prayer life, if I want to have fruitful communion with him, if I really want to seek him, I must simply organize myself to do that and to plan for that.

I think of something that our brother John Piper said once, that a vital prayer life never comes by accident. It never comes by spontaneity. It comes by careful planning. That is perhaps why Paul said in 1 Timothy chapter four and verse seven, what did he say?

Discipline yourself for godliness. That there is a certain organization that is required for personal holiness and godliness. Brethren, if you do not have a regular scheduled time where you say, I'm gonna seek the Lord all through the day, but I'm gonna start with this, start today.

I think of Oswald Chambers. He said something just remarkable that I think pulls me back into a myriad of experiences that I've had in this point. He says, if you have ever prayed in the dawn, you will ask yourself why you were so foolish so as not to do it always.

It is difficult to get into communion with God in the midst, and I'm not sure what kind of language this is, but he says in the midst of the hurly burly.

Of the day.

Have you ever experienced this? You know those times where you neglect seeking the Lord? You neglect communion with him? And then it is as if you lose your mind so that you become not only acquainted with that condition, but fully comfortable in it, that I can live apart from Christ.

And it's like I've learned to live without food. I've learned to live without water. I've somehow discovered the fountain of youth that I can go on and on and on and not seek him for a moment. And we become, as it were, like unreasoning animals, unreasonable animals that just go about our day by instinct.

We get up, we eat, we go to work, we do our thing. We survive, we get by, but we are totally removed from communion with our God. And then one day, the Lord blesses you. Maybe it's with an impulse to pray.

Maybe it's with an extra 10 minutes. Who knows what it is? But you go and you get alone with God. And there is a moment that hits where you go, what in the world have I done with my life that I've somehow become acquainted with this godless existence?

I am a Christian.

And the very thing that I am denying myself when I neglect this is my greatest good, the very communion that the Lord God has purchased for me in Christ. So if I can give you the most practical counsel, if we're up in the air and it's, are we gonna turn right or turn left?

How do we deal with this situation? What do we do in this case? Say with George Mueller that you are going to every day seek before you begin the day to get your soul happy in the Lord. That you would seek him, that you would make that appointment with him every day and keep it.

Perhaps some of you, like me, struggle with a wandering mind. I love the counsel of one Puritan, William Grinnell, who said, pray often rather than very long at a time. So that maybe you don't seek, you don't read Martin Luther's biography and say, okay, I'm gonna pray three hours every morning.

But maybe you say, I'm gonna pray an hour every day in five minute spurts throughout the day. I'm gonna give what I can all throughout my day. Brethren, I urge you, in the words of another Puritan, we must make heaven our scope and aim.

To seek the favor of God above and to keep up our communion with the upper world by faith. Christ is our best friend and our head. He has been advanced to the highest dignity and honor and he has gone before us to secure the heavenly happiness.

Therefore, we should seek and secure what he has purchased at so vast an expense. Communion with God, communion with Christ. In the second verse, we read this. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

As Paul begins these words, set your mind, it's interesting, it could be translated and it has been translated a few different ways. Some have translated those words set your mind as think. This is a favorite verb of the Apostle Paul.

He uses it 23 times in the New Testament. And I think that if your translation says, think about the things that are above, I would suggest to you that I think the ESV renders it better on set your minds on the things that are above.

And that is because this word denotes more than just intellectual activity. It speaks to the fundamental orientation of a person's mind and will. Bible scholars have looked at this and pointed out that it's in the present tense.

And so it doesn't just mean set your mind at some point in the future, or set your minds on things that are above for a moment in time, but it is a habit of mind, whereby we are always directing our minds back to the reality of the things that are above.

Because we have been raised with Christ, we're not only alive, but we have been raised up and we are seated with him in the heavenly places. We must not only seek what is above, but we must set our faculties on that which is above.

And this requires, I think Paul is very clear about it, that we take our minds off the things that are below. He says not on the things that are on the earth. This very likely has to do with some of what Paul is combating here as he deals with empty philosophies and traditions and ascetic viewpoints and other things like that.

But I think that it has to do with everything that would draw our minds away from Christ. Because we see that when Paul says it in Romans 8 .6, for to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace.

John Stott says on this, he says it is fundamental to apostolic teaching that we cannot set our minds on Christ and sin at the same time. And that to concentrate on such earthly things is seriously to enfeeble and even threaten our fellowship with Christ.

Brothers and sisters, I ask you again, does this sermon find you setting your mind on the things that are above where Christ is? Or are your thoughts altogether earthbound? Have you been taken up with the worries and cares of this life rather than with Christ?

I'm reminded of one brother, a brother pastor who shared a question that he asks all of his potential candidates in his church, pastoral candidates in his church. And if you'll humor me, I want to ask you the question that he asks all of these pastoral candidates.

So brothers or sisters, we're not egalitarians here, but I grant you can suspend disbelief for a moment and just imagine that it's the two of us sitting across the table from one another. You're seeking to serve the church in some way, whatever it might be.

And I want to pose this question to you. What do you think about when you have nothing else to think about? Meaning, when you have a moment in time to direct your thoughts to anything in the world or outside of the world that you can, where does your mind go?

Because that will tell you what your mind is set upon. In that rare moment of margin in your day, does your mind gravitate towards your favorite hobbies? Does it drift towards your next ambition, your career ambition, your business idea?

Does it impulsively move to social media or to politics or to news or some other worry on the horizon? Does it drift towards the worries and cares of the world or does your mind gravitate towards Christ?

Can't you see that what our minds gravitate towards tells us something about what we have our minds set upon? Some people will say that it's simply impossible for us to do this, for us to set our minds upon Christ.

But again, I come to you and I say, look at verse two. Is this imperitival statement a suggestion, a recommendation, an encouragement? It is a command. And what God commands, he empowers. One observer writes, this instinctive drifting of mind to Christ does not happen by accident.

It is the fruit of spiritual discipline of a deliberate commitment to seek the things that are above, to fix our gaze on Christ. Only by these means does this new mindset develop. And when it does, we find ourselves thinking spiritual thoughts in a natural manner and our natural thoughts become truly spiritual.

Maybe that reminds you of a time when it was natural. It was natural for you to think about Christ. Sometimes that is the most disturbing thing I find in my Christian life, is when I can think of a time when I was more inclined to pray, when I loved the word more, when I desired the Lord more, when I did have that spare moment, and when my mind, not forcibly, but naturally, went to him because I had set my mind on the things that were above, the things that are above.

Brothers and sisters, we cannot be content to live in the valley. We must push for the summit. We must push to press on, to know the Lord, to seek his face, to have our every impulse directed to him, and we must train our minds to do this.

When we were new believers, it came almost naturally, didn't it? There was that new love. There was that stage of infatuation. But as we grow older and more mature in the Lord, it is not that our mind then moves on to different things.

We merely, like a marriage or a good relationship or anything else, we must simply have to work at it. MacArthur says on setting our minds to the things that are above, he says that we need, and I agree with him, that this needs to start with the word.

He says, as a compass points north, the believer's entire disposition should point itself towards the things of heaven. Heavenly thoughts can only come by understanding heavenly realities from Scripture, that we need to fill our minds with the revelation of God, that we would seek God.

It comes by setting our minds to the things that are above by the help of the church. Sometimes we quote from Hebrews 10, 24 and 25, and we speak about the importance of not neglecting the assembly of the saints, how it's bad to develop the habit of neglecting the assembly of the saints.

Go to Hebrews chapter 10 with me for a moment. I want you to see that the church does not meet together simply because it's a good idea to meet together, simply because it's good to keep the practice, or because the Lord will then be more pleased with us.

But what does it say in verse 24? And let us consider how to stir up one another, not only to good works, but to what? But to love. How to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some.

That one of the ways that the Lord keeps our minds fixed on him is not by something that we possess internally within ourselves, it's a blessing that the Lord gives us every week, multiple times a week when we come together.

So that our brother Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he says, the Christian needs another Christian who speaks God's word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself without belying or obscuring the truth.